Police took his passport. But they forgot one legal step.

The police asked him to hand over his passport. The passport office kept it. Neither had the legal authority to do so.

Chennupati Kranthi Kumar had flown from the United States to Andhra Pradesh to perform his father's death anniversary rituals. A man with a job waiting for him in America. Then a criminal complaint—dowry harassment filed by his wife—turned a family visit into a legal trap that would take him all the way to the Supreme Court.

The question was simple: Could the police and the passport office hold a man's passport indefinitely just because a criminal case was pending, without following the specific procedure the law required?

When the police asked for the passport

During the investigation, the police issued a notice under Section 91 of the CrPC (a provision that allows a court or police officer to summon any document needed for an investigation). The notice asked Kumar to produce his passport. He handed it over—the blue cover of the document felt thin and ordinary in his hands, but it was the key to his life abroad.

The police then forwarded the passport to the Regional Passport Office in Hyderabad. There it sat, in a file that grew dusty, while Kumar's job in the United States hung in the balance. No formal order was passed to impound it under Section 10 of the Passports Act, 1967 (the specific legal procedure required to take away a person's passport). No seizure order was made under Section 102 CrPC (the police's power to seize property during an investigation). The passport was simply kept.

Kumar needed to return to the United States for his job. Without his passport, he could not travel. He approached the trial court—the II Additional Chief Metropolitan Magistrate-cum-Mahila Magistrate in Vijayawada—asking for his passport back. On 14 June 2022, the court refused. The courtroom fell silent as the magistrate dismissed the application, the order paper rustling as it was handed down. The trial judge gave no detailed reasoning in the order—simply a refusal, leaving Kumar stranded in India with his job across the ocean hanging by a thread. The file, thin and unremarkable, was closed with a single stamp of rejection.

He then went to the Andhra Pradesh High Court.

The High Court's impossible condition

The High Court agreed that the passport should be returned. But it imposed conditions. Kumar would have to deposit ₹10 lakhs as a fixed deposit in his wife's name—the weight of that financial obligation pressing down on him, a sum that represented months of savings. And he would have to return the passports of his wife and his minor son.

This created a new problem. Kumar told the court that his son's passport was lost—perhaps misplaced during the chaos of the legal proceedings, perhaps simply gone, the document vanished like a leaf in the wind. He did not possess his wife's passport—she held it herself, a separate document in her own custody, untouched by the police or any court order. The condition, he argued, was impossible to fulfil and had nothing to do with the criminal case against him.

The High Court did not budge. The courtroom air grew thick with tension as the judges refused to reconsider. The order stood—a legal dead end that left Kumar with no path forward. He could not produce what he did not have, and the court would not relent. Kumar appealed to the Supreme Court.

Why the passport could not be held

Before the Supreme Court, Kumar's lawyers argued a straightforward point: the passport was never legally taken away from him. The police had used Section 91 CrPC to ask for it, but that provision only allows a document to be produced for inspection—it does not authorise the police or the passport office to keep it indefinitely. The only way to legally take possession of a passport is through an order of impounding under Section 10 of the Passports Act, 1967, or through a seizure under Section 102 CrPC. Neither had happened.

The Supreme Court agreed. It relied on its own earlier judgment in Suresh Nanda v. CBI (2008), where it had held that a passport cannot be retained by the police or the passport authority without following the procedure under the Passports Act. The court observed that the retention of Kumar's passport was "unauthorised" and that he was entitled to its return. The bench—Justice Abhay S. Oka and Justice Rajesh Bindal—noted that "without an order of impounding under Section 10 of the Passports Act, 1967, the Passport Authority cannot retain a passport handed over by the Police merely on the ground of a pending criminal case." The words hung in the courtroom, a clear rebuke to the authorities who had bypassed the law.

The bench also noted that a notice under Section 91 CrPC to produce a passport is not valid unless the passport is actually necessary for the purposes of the investigation, inquiry, or trial. In this case, there was no such finding—the police had simply asked for it, and the passport office had kept it, with no judicial oversight. The provision, designed to aid investigations, had been twisted into a tool of indefinite detention of a man's travel rights.

The court's reasoning drew deeply from the structure of the Passports Act, 1967. Section 10 of that Act lays out a clear procedure: the passport authority must pass a formal order, give notice to the holder, and provide reasons for impounding. None of that had been done. The police, by using Section 91 CrPC as a shortcut, had bypassed an entire statutory framework meant to protect the citizen's right to travel. The Supreme Court would not allow it.

The condition that went too far

The Supreme Court then turned to the condition imposed by the High Court—that Kumar must return his wife's and son's passports. The court found this condition illegal on multiple grounds.

First, the retention of Kumar's own passport was itself unauthorised. A court cannot impose conditions for the release of something that should never have been taken in the first place. Second, the condition required Kumar to do something he could not do—return passports he did not possess. His son's passport was lost. His wife's passport was with her. The condition effectively punished him for circumstances beyond his control. The court noted that the wife was a separate person with her own legal rights—her passport could not be used as a bargaining chip in her husband's case.

The court set aside that condition entirely. "The condition imposed on the appellant by the impugned order of returning the passports of the 4th respondent and of the son is set aside," the bench declared, the words cutting through the silence of the Supreme Court chamber. It directed the Regional Passport Office to help Kumar's wife apply for a fresh passport if she needed one, and ordered Kumar to cooperate in that process. The rest of the High Court's order—the direction to return Kumar's own passport—was confirmed. The appeals were partly allowed, a measured victory that restored Kumar's right to travel while leaving the criminal case against him untouched.

THE PLAY: If your client's passport is held without a formal impounding order under Section 10 of the Passports Act, 1967, file an application under Section 482 CrPC for its return—the retention is unauthorised and the court must order release.

This judgment is a reminder that the police and the passport office cannot bypass the law simply because a criminal case is pending. A passport is not just any document. It is the key to a person's livelihood, their ability to travel, and in cases like Kumar's, their ability to work abroad and support their family. The right to hold a passport is connected to Article 21 of the Constitution (the right to life and personal liberty), and any restriction on that right must follow the procedure established by law.

The Supreme Court ended where it began: a passport taken without legal authority must be returned, no matter how serious the criminal case. The blue cover of the document, once held without right, was now to be restored to its owner—a small victory for the rule of law.